KovacicLab team members coordinated organization of European Researchers Night in Croatia 25.9.2015 in Split and Zagreb. Together with partners from University of Split and Faculty of Electrical Engineering at University of Zagreb and Society znanost.org, and many other faculties, scientific institutions and public bodies, European Researchers Night event engaged about 200 researchers, and about 150 volunteers with attractive and popular science and innovation program that attracted more then 13.000 people in two largest cities in Croatia! link to webpage of ERN.

New positions in KovacicLab

Four new research positions, as well as one administrative are available in Kovacic Lab, within the EU-funded project EvoNA. These one-year positions are: 1 PhD student and 1 postdoc for neurobiology in the auditory neuroelectronic interface project, 1 PhD student and 1 postdoc for medical neuroelectronics (cochlear implants, speech and hearing research). These are funded by the EU structural funds under the Operational Programme “Human Resources Development” 2007 – 2013 (HR.3.2.01-0320 “Research Fellowships for professional development of young researchers and postdoctoral researchers in the field of medical neuroelectronics”, in short EvoNA) with the full-time contract up to 12 months, [...]

Prof.dr. dr. Birger Kollmeier visited KovacicLab and gave a talk on Thursday July 2nd, 2015 (room B102, 12.15pm) on “Measuring, modelling, and improving speech recognition across languages – from machine learning to understanding and aiding the auditory system”. Prof.dr.dr. Birger Kollmeier is full professor of medical physics at University of Oldenburg (Germany) and director of Cluster of Excellence Hearing4all and one of the leading experts in a speech and hearing research.

17. June in Split, Croatia Doc.dr.sc. Damir Kovačić received Yearly award for science – “Kruno Prijatelj” given by Slobodna Dalmacija. Award was given for research results on characterization of spiral ganglion neurons cultured on silicon micro-pillar substrates for new auditory neuro-electronic interfaces published on Journal of Neural Engineering in January 20105 (link).

The seminar with FAR (Swedish audiology foundation)

Five members of FAR ( http://www.stingerfonden.org/) visited KovacicLab on Tuesday 9th of June 2015 and closed one day seminar /workshop was organized. After the Lab Tour at School of medicine program was composed of presentations from both groups on topics:

-FAR: Our history in interdisciplinary research in Audiology, which led to a multi-programmable hearing aid.
-KovacicLab: Voice gender identification in cochlear implant users.
-FAR: Presentation of Villa Forum Auditum. Examples of current Swedish research projects in Audiology.
-KovacicLab: Auditory neuro-electronic interfaces.
-General Discussion
-Lunch
-Informal discussion with PhD students and KovacicLab research staff.

CortexSTIM stimulator is designed to be used for direct electrical stimulation of cerebral cortex focal regions for motor, sensory and language functions. Constant current method has advantages over constant voltage stimulation when considering patient neurophysiologic aspects. Constant current types of stimulus are used to deliver controllable amount of electrical charge, regardless of the impedance of tissue between the electrodes. The stimulator can be used in two regimes in which current range, number of pulses, interstimulus time and frequency can be controlled. With classic Penfield mode novel Multipulse method can be used for intraoperative brain stimulation. For each method, parameters are defined independently and are preserved during a [...]

Abstract: One of the strategies to improve cochlear implant technology is to increase the number of electrodes in the neuro-electronic interface. The objective was to characterize in vitro cultures of spiral ganglion neurons (SGN) cultured on surfaces of novel silicon micro-pillar substrates (MPS). Approach. SGN from P5 rat pups were cultured on MPS with different micro-pillar widths (1–5.6 μm) and spacings (0.6–15 μm) and were compared [...]